Our seventh nominee for Car of the Year may have once signified that you were having a mid-life crisis, but buying this Boxster could be the best decision you make in 2010

It's unfair and unjust but true: Buy a Porsche Boxster and you get stereotyped. Suddenly you're having a midlife crisis. You have money but not a lot of money. You like "cute" cars.

Buy the 2011 Boxster Spyder and you won't have that problem. Because the Spyder, a lighter, more nimble version of Porsche's entry-level midengine roadster, is not a Boxster. It is a Porsche in the old-school sense — a sports car first and a lifestyle accessory second, or perhaps not at all; a speed-demon special; a stripped-down sprinter that ditches weight-adding fripperies in favor of sharpened reflexes and a bigger grin on your face.

For the relatively low price of $61,200 — $3,200 more than an ordinary Boxster S — you get more purging than a bottle of ipecac: Aluminum doors borrowed from the 911 Turbo cut 33 pounds. A build-it-yourself convertible top — little more than a carbon-fiber frame and a canvas handkerchief — replaces the base Boxster's power top and weighs just 13 pounds. A one-piece aluminum trunk lid with twin headrest fairings saves 6.5 pounds. The gas tank is smaller; air-conditioning, radio, and even cupholders are optional, all because they add pork. And that's not even the whole list.

The result is a 2,811-pound ball of German fury that weighs 176 pounds less than an ordinary Boxster S and 421 pounds less than a Nissan 370Z. A direct-injected, 3.4-liter, 320-hp flat six sits a foot behind your ears, and it lives to howl its four-valve head off and catapult you into the next time zone. As if that weren't enough, Porsche's welterweight rocket is a snappier, more predictable handler — steering and suspension upgrades are part of the package — than its hallowed 911, which puts it high in the running for best-handling car in history.

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None of this would matter if the Spyder were cranky, loud, or otherwise a pain in the ass. It's not. The carbon-fiber bucket seats are like falling butt-first into a coffee cup, but they're comfortable on long trips. The Spyder's twin trunks — one front, one rear — are the same size as those of a regular Boxster, and they'll swallow several weeks' worth of luggage. The optional air-conditioning will refreeze the polar ice caps if you adjust it right, and the razor-sharp chassis tuning never translates into a teeth-jarring ride. This is speed without compromise, thrills without spills, and proof that supercar grins and fat wallets aren't always tied. The Boxster Spyder represents the pared-down, less-is-more future of sports cars. If you want more than this, then you want too much.

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